The memory of that ugly bruise crossed my mind uneasily. “Why doesn’t she leave him?”
Mrs. Veering shrugged. “Where would she go? Besides, she’s irrational now and I think she knows it. She apologized last night when . . . when it happened.”
“What happened?”
“They had a row . . . just a married persons’ quarrel, nothing serious. Then she started to scream and I went downstairs . . . their bedroom’s on the first floor. She apologized immediately and so did he but of course by then she’d managed to wake up the whole house.”
“I should think her place was in a rest home or something.”
Mrs. Veering sighed. “It may come to that. I pray not. But now here’s the guest list for the party. I’ll want you to make a press list for me and . . .”
Our business took about an hour; she had the situation well in hand and, though I didn’t dare say so, she was quite capable of being her own press agent. She had a shrewd grip on all the problems of publicity. My job, I gathered, was to be her front. It was just as well. We decided then on my fee, which was large, and she typed out an agreement between us with the speed and finesse of an old-time stenographer. “I studied typing,” she said simply, noticing my awe. “It was one of the ways I used to help my late husband. I did everything for him.”
We each signed our copy of the agreement and I was dismissed to frolic on the beach; the last I saw of Mrs. Veering was her moving resolutely toward the console which held, in ever-readiness, ice and whisky and glasses.
One the beach, the others were gathered.
The sun was fiercely white and the day was perfect with just enough breeze off the water to keep you cool.
I looked at my fellow house guests with interest: it’s always interesting to see people you know only dressed without any clothes on, or not much that is.
Both Allie and Mrs. Brexton had good figures. Allie’s especially; she looked just about the way she had the night before when I had mentally examined her ... the only flaw perhaps was that she was a little short in the legs; otherwise, she was a good-looking woman, prettier in the sun wearing a two-piece bathing suit than in her usual dull clothes. She was stretched out on a blanket next to her brother who was a solid-looking busk with a chest which had only just begun to settle around the pelvis.
Mrs. Brexton was sitting on the edge of a bright Navajo blanket in the center of which, holding a ridiculous parasol, was Miss Lung, sweating under all her clothes while Brexton, burlier than I’d thought, did handstands clumsily to show he was just as young as he felt which apparently wasn’t very young.
Miss Lung hailed me. “You must sit here!” She pounded the blanket beside her.
“That’s O.K.” I said. “I don’t want to crowd you.” I sat down cross-legged on the sand between the blanket where she sat and the Claypooles. I was a good yard from her busy fingers.
“My, I’ve never seen such athletic menl” Behind her harlequin dark glasses, I could see I was being given the once-over.
At that moment Brexton fell flat on his face. Spluttering in the sand, he said, “Rock under my hand . . . sharp damn thing.” He pretended his hand hurt while Allie and I exchanged amused glances.
“None of us is as young as we used to be,” said her brother, chuckling, pulling himself up on his elbow. “You’re getting more like Picasso every day.”
“Damned fraud,” said the painter irritably, rubbing the sand out of his face. “Nine tenths of what he’s done I could do better . . . anybody could do better.”
“And the other tenth?”
“Well, that. . . He shrugged. I’d already found that Brexton, like most painters, hated all ether living painters, especially the grand old men. He differed from most in that he was candid, having perhaps more confidence.
He harrangued us a while in the brilliant light. I stretched out and shut my eyes, enjoying the warmth on my back. The others did the same, digesting breakfast.
Claypoole was the first to go in the water. Without warning, he leaped to his feet and dashed down to the ocean, diving flat and sharp into the first breaker. He was a powerful swimmer and it was a pleasure to watch him.
We all sat up. Then Mrs. Brexton walked slowly down to the water’s edge where she put on her bathing cap, standing, I could see, in such a way as to hide from us the long bruise on her neck.
She waded out. Brexton got to his feet and followed her. He stopped her for a moment and they talked; then he shrugged and she went on by him, diving awkwardly into the first wave. He stood watching her, his back to us, as she swam slowly out toward Claypoole.
Allie turned to me suddenly. “She’s going too far. There’s an awful undertow.”
“She seems like a fair swimmer. Anyway your brother’s there.”
“My!” exclaimed Miss Lung. “They swim like porpoises. How I envy them!”
Claypoole was now beyond the breakers, swimming easily with the undertow which, apparently, was pulling south for he was already some yards below where he'd gone into the water; he was heading diagonally for shore.
Mrs. Brexton was not yet beyond the breakers; I could see here white bathing cap bobbing against the blue.
Allie and I both got to our feet and joined Brexton at the water’s edge. The water was cold as it eddied about our ankles.
“I don’t think Mildred should go so far out,” said Allie.
Brexton nodded, his eyes still on his wife. “I told her not to. Naturally that was all she needed.”
“It’s quite an undertow,” I said, remembering something about trajectory, about estimated speed: Claypoole was now sliding into shore on the breakers at least thirty feet below us.
As far as the eye could see to north and south the white beach, edged by grassy dunes, extended. People, little black dots were clustered in front of each house. While, a mile or two down, there was a swarm of them in front of the club.
The sky was cloudless; the sun white fire.
Then, without warning, Brexton rushed into the water. Half-running, half-swimming, he moved toward his wife.
She had made no sound but she was waving weakly on the line where the surf began. The undertow had got her.
I dived in too. Allie shouted to her brother who was already on the beach. He joined us, half-running, half-swimming out to Mildred.
Salt water in my eyes, I cut through the surf, aware of Claypoole near me. I never got to Mildred though. Instead, I found myself trying to support Brexton some feet away from his wife. He was gasping for air. “Cramp!” He shouted and began to double up, so I grabbed him while Claypoole shot beyond me to Mildred. With some difficulty, I got Brexton back to shore. Claypoole floated Mildred in.
Exhausted, chilled from the water, I rolled Brexton onto the sand. He sat there for a moment trying to get his breath,
holding his side with a look of pain. I was shaking all over from cold, from tension.
Then we both went up on the terrace where the others had gathered in a circle about the white still body of Mildred Brexton.
She lay on her stomach and Claypoole squatted over her, giving artificial respiration. I noticed with horrified fascination the iridescent bubbles which had formed upon her blue lips. As he desperately worked her arms, her lungs, the bubbles one by one burst.
For what seemed like a hundred years there was no sound but that of Claypoole’s exhausted breathing as he worked in grim silence. It came like a shock to us when we heard his voice, the first voice to speak. He turned to his sister, not halting in his labor, and said, “Doctor . . . quick.”
The sun was at fierce noon when the doctor came, in time to pronounce Mildred Brexton dead by drowning.